USA Today’s Opinion section dedicated “Today’s Debate” to
religious freedom – or the fight over Obamacare’s contraception mandate. In a
January 13 piece entitled, “Obamacare
Overreach Tramples Little Sisters of the Poor,” USA Today rebelled
against its own (media) kind to call out the Obama administration for
having “picked a fight with Catholics and other religious groups.” Among other
faults, the article found the administration’s “position” on the mandate
“constitutionally suspect, politically foolish and ultimately unproductive.”

The Supreme Court recently consented
to hear appeals challenging the contraception mandate, which would
force employers to provide or consent to free contraception and
abortion-inducing drugs for employees.

As a prime target of the mandate, USA Today cited the Little
Sisters of the Poor: a group of nuns who care for the poor and elderly, and who
refuse to comply with the mandate due to religious belief. Their case, USA
Today argued, makes the administration look a “political loser.”

In her “Opposing
View,” also published in USA Today, Cecile Richards, president of the
Planned Parenthood Federation of America, argued, “No one’s freedom to practice
religion is compromised.” The administration, she said, “is bending over
backward to ensure” freedom of religion. How gracious of it!

The Little Sisters are not included in the 350,000 or so churches
exempted from the mandate. But, Richards asserted, “the only thing the Little
Sisters must do is fill out a one-page form stating that it objects to
providing contraception” to avoid millions in fines. Ah, the so-called “compromise”
that isn’t – an accounting trick that moves money around in a way that allows the
administration to pretend the contraception coverage isn’t actually coming from
the nuns. (In somewhat the same Planned Parenthood pretends that the hundreds
of thousands of abortions it performs aren’t subsidized tax dollars.)

USA Today, however, wasn’t having it, explaining that the
Sisters must “sign a certification that allows their insurance companies to
provide it [birth control] instead” that arguably “makes them complicit in an
act that violates a tenant of their faith.”

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